SQL Server/Unisys Configuration Tops TPC-C Nonclustered Benchmark

This week, Microsoft and Unisys announced that SQL Server 2000 running on a Unisys ES7000 server set a new world record for the Transaction Processing Performance Council's (TPC's) nonclustered, single-server (scale-up) TPC-C benchmark. The test system achieved 141,138.44 transactions per minute (tpmC) at a cost per transaction of $23.84.

The tested system represents the first Microsoft- and Intel-based nonclustered system to surpass the 100,000 tpmC level, a feat previously exclusive to mainframes and large UNIX systems. The 32-processor system is also the first system that used more than 8 processors running Windows and SQL Server 2000 to post a TPC-C result.

The test configuration used a Unisys ES7000 with 32 Intel 900MHz Pentium III Xeon processors, 64GB of memory, and Giganet networking. The server ran Microsoft's forthcoming release of Windows Datacenter Server Limited Edition and the company's upcoming release of SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition Service Pack 2 (SP2). The complete configuration will be available March 10, 2002; the ES7000 is available today.